Problem with Xserver and nvidia card
 

Alright, I have an interesting problem that I don't think I've seen pop up yet on the board. I just did an install of Debian on my new desktop and compiled the latest version of the NVIDIA drivers. The problem comes with the way xserver behaves when booting up. Occasionally it will not load at all and give me an error message and ask if I want to view the log. Other times it will load, but instead of showing me the login screen, I get a screen full of horizontal lines. Then OTHER times, it will load up, but the resolution for the display is all sorts of messed up. It will sometimes stretch the screen vertically, or sometimes just be super zoomed in on one portion of what it would normally look like. Then again OTHER times it loads up just fine. Anyone have any ideas why, or what I could do to fix this?

Thanks

Don't have a Nvidia card but I'm guessing if I was you I would go to the Nvidia website and download the linux drivers from them.

Also, for future reference X keeps logs. They are in /var/log and will tell you what is going on.


Warnings:
cat Xorg.0.log | grep WW

Errors:
cat Xorg.0.log | grep EE

Read the whole thing:
less Xorg.0.log

Thanks for the quick reply.

I forgot to mention, I did download the NVIDIA drivers from the website. I did as you said and came up with no errors in my XFree86.log.old, but I did have a couple of warnings:

(WW) The directory "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic" does not exist.
(WW) The directory "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID" does not exist.
(WW) Open APM failed (/dev/apm_bios) (No such file or directory)
(WW) NVIDIA(0): The user specified HorizSync "30.000-65.000" has been adjusted
(WW) NVIDIA(0): to "31.000-65.000" (the intersection with EDID-specified
(WW) NVIDIA(0): HorizSync "31.000-67.000")
(WW) NVIDIA(0): The user specified VertRefresh "50.000-75.000" has been
(WW) NVIDIA(0): adjusted to "59.000-61.000" (the intersection with
(WW) NVIDIA(0): EDID-specified VertRefresh "59.000-61.000"
(WW) NVIDIA(0): Not using mode "700x525" (height 1050 is larger than
(WW) NVIDIA(0): EDID-specified maximum 1024)

I am kind of curious about that last line especially. There is no line specifying a 700x525 mode in my XF86Config file.